The Missing Link; PTSD and Sleep

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder also known as PTSD is a lifelong mental illness, that is non-curable with an array of symptoms. PTSD is caused by a traumatic event that is witnessed or experienced by a person. Victims of PTS often suffer from sleeping disorders from recurring nightmares, constant flashbacks and sever anxiety that is often triggered by stressors.  The most common treatments are therapy, cognitive processing theory, and prolonged therapy. All of which require patients to talk about their trauma, often making those who suffer from PTSD shy away from treatment all together. Leading to severe anxiety, depression, substance abuse, and sleep problems. But what if there was another way? What if you could sleep your way through trauma?

Although we are still far from finding the cure to PTSD new research has pointed in the direction of sleep for a possible form of treatment. The work of Hørlyck says that a new treatment for PTSD could possibly be sleep. Which isn’t so different from the findings of Schouten, although the use of TMR and enhanced cognition has yielding promising results it may be possible to enhance negative memory control, essentially making the brain forget a memory. 

Hørlycks work in the article “Rest May Help Reduce PTSD Symptoms” suggested that since sleep increases the processing in the hippocampus there by strengthening the contextual memory system is an important factor in preventing unwanted flashback of a traumatic memory. “The coherence of memories is often compromising when people are exposed to psychological trauma, resulting in emotional memory popping up involuntary and out of context. However, the binding of an event memory with its context may be partly restored with rest, facilitating deliberate control of the memory.”(Hørlyck). Similarly, the work Schouten’s work in the paper “State of the Art on Targeted Memory Reactivation: Sleep Your Way to Enhanced Cognition.” Suggest that while associating an item or something with an auditory or olfactory cue and replaying those cues while under SWS or REM sleep could prove to enhance cognition in the brain. Although we are far from implementing TMR researching as PTSD treatment it’s an exciting prospect to think about. Schechtman-Drayman suggest that it may be possible to enhance forgetting. Which if possible, would be amazing for curing PTSD instead of simply treating symptoms the symptoms, we may one day through sleep therapy be able to completely rid the symptoms from the source and forget extremely traumatic events. 

Although we don’t have the answer on how to cure PTSD one thing is for sure sleep seems to be the missing link. With new sleep study research underway and its importance in memory we may just be one step closer to curing PTSD.

Schouten, Daphne I., et al. “State of the Art on Targeted Memory Reactivation: Sleep Your Way to Enhanced Cognition.” Sleep Medicine Reviews, vol. 32, 2017, pp. 123–131., doi:10.1016/j.smrv.2016.04.002.

Hørlyck, Lone D. “Rest May Help Reduce PTSD Symptoms.” Neuroscience News, UCL, 9 Oct. 2019, https://neurosciencenews.com/ptsd-rest-15049/.